Music for Cougars

Admittedly, we've enjoyed Sugar Ray for a long time, going back to the days when they were a thrash punk band called The Shrinky Dinks and played places like Louie Louie's in Costa Mesa, California. Now we love them. Not because they released a number of catchy, relatively breezy pop albums in the late 1990s, but because they're about to make their comeback with an album entitled "Music for Cougars." Now here's a band that both knows and embraces its audience!

According to Billboard, "'Cougars' sees the band returning to the lazy grooves, easy beats, and catchy harmonies that proved a winning formula and propelled the group to sales of more than 12 million copies over a five album run for Atlantic, plus a 'Best of Sugar Ray' release on Rhino, before parting ways with the label in 2006."

One of the things we've always liked about Sugar Ray is that they've never appeared to take themselves all that seriously. It's hard not to appreciate a band who followed up their smash hit album "Floored," with one titled "14:59," in reference to their fifteen minutes of fame being nearly up.

And even as lead singer Mark McGrath has gone on to do a number of things atypical of a guy with punk roots, including hosting Extra, he seems to have retained his casual way. He tells Billboard, "We have realistic views of how the music industry is today. I know people aren't sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for a Sugar Ray record. But that wasn't the point. It was purely because we love to make music." Music for Cougars, no less.